Tea at Trianon: The Pamphlet Conspiracy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

The Pamphlet Conspiracy

The article below was in the news last fall, but I wanted to post it here since Dr. Burrows' book sounds very interesting. It seems that some conspiracy theories are real.

Sex, Lies, and the "myth" of Marie-Antoinette
by Nigel Bunyan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/30/wmarie30.xml

For generations of history students Marie Antoinettewas the sexually depraved queen who helped spark theFrench Revolution by joking that her impoverished citizens should "eat cake" during a bread shortage. Documents from the time suggested that prior to her date with a guillotine the Austrian-born queen had a voracious sexual appetite encompassing both men andwomen. Indeed, it is this racy image that will be perpetuated yet again next month when Sofia Coppola's cinematic homage to her, Marie Antoinette, premieres in Britain.

However, a British expert on the French Revolution is claiming that the "evidence" of the queen's reputation for debauchery is a tissue of lies, thought up by London-based criminals intent on blackmailing the French royal family. Printed in a series of ribald pamphlets, it was only read by the Paris mobs after the fall of the Bastillein 1789. Dr Simon Burrows, of Leeds University, argues that instead of distributing the pamphlets, they invited Louis XVI to pay for their destruction. He did so, apparently handsomely, and in return they burned them - except for around 30 copies which were duly seized when the prison was stormed. Dr Burrows agrees with the consensus view that even Marie Antoinette's famous remark, in which she allegedly suggested that starving peasants should eat cake, is a lie. Lies or no lies, the pamphlets did for Marie Antoinette. Share

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: To me, the Coppola film is an extension of pamphlets.; January 9, 2007 at 6:59:00 PM EST
elena maria vidal said...: That is certainly what I thought when I first saw some of the stills.; January 9, 2007 at 8:41:00 PM EST